Nutrition Upgrade: How To Be Food Flexible and Wild – Teri Cochrane & Mareya Ibrahim : 951

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey, formerly Bulletproof Radio. Today's guest, Terri Cochran. She is a integrative practitioner and she has a methodology called the Cochrane Method, which looks at biochemistry, nutrition, genetic tendencies, herbs and counseling to figure out custom things that work when other people don't. And she's written a book called the wildatarian Diet. Living As Nature Intended. So we're going to talk today about how what you eat turns your genes on or off. We're talking about epigenetics and nutrigenomics and how things that you might have heard me refer to earlier, wild caught, wild fed proteins, lead to better health, starting at your molecules, starting at your cells and moving on up. We're also going to go deep on some of the cool biochemical reactions you don't know about in your body. Terry, welcome to the show.

Oh, David, so great to be with you and your audience.

What happens, like, what made you learn about this?

Well, the trajectory to a great discovery sometimes starts with a limiting belief system. When someone tells you that your child will never be normal, will not grow past 5 foot 4, and will live with brain seizures most of his life. When you hear that kind of information flood into your ears and then into your nervous system, it's quite a shock. Of course, I made the determination that he would not be one of those statistics, that I would be that mother that was going to try to figure it out.

Maria Ibrahim. Maria, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Dave. It's so great to be here.

Why did we need a book about eating clean?

You know, when it's kind of one of those things that's defined so differently by different people. And, you know, for me, the bottom line is we're eating as nature intended. We're eating as close to the, to the source of food and avoiding food that's highly processed and adulterated. It doesn't necessarily mean ruling out whole food groups per se. I think some people's explanations might be that drastic. But for me, it's really more about eating food in an identifiable form. You know, lots of fresh produce, proteins that are raised the way they should be, eating the foods that nature has created for them and avoiding foods that come highly processed from a plant. It doesn't mean that you can't have packaged foods because I think that packaged foods have a place and I think that foods that are in a form that allow us to eat, eat on the go and snack, et cetera, and have the variety that we love are completely viable. It's Just can you identify the ingredients that are in that package? And I think that really to me is the nascents of what eating clean means.

So how's your son? Like, what happened?

Well, the boy that couldn't, they said he would not be normal. And they were right. He became sick. Superhuman. I heard there's a really good book out there.

So how's your son? Like, what, what happened?

Well, the boy that couldn't, they said he would not be normal. And they were right. He became superhuman. What we found was when we uncovered his underlying root causes, he became a gold medalist at the junior Olympics in karate, national champion. He was the valediction speaker at his school. He was on a full academic ride at University of Virginia.

We can call you a proud mom.

Oh, just a little bit.

High five, mom.

Thank you.

Now, it turns out that what you were feeding your son was a major variable here. How did you figure that out?

Absolutely. I became this rabid researcher. I'm a risk manager. I was a risk manager, as you mentioned, for multiple billions of dollars of assets. And I soon became a risk manager for his health. And this was before Google wasn't even around. The Internet was just starting almost 20 years ago. And so I went to libraries and I interviewed parents, I interviewed anyone I can get a hold of. But the one tipping point, and we hit that tipping point with a mountain of books on my kitchen table. It was food allergies and allergy connection with food. And I realized that the standard American diet that I was feeding my son, although it was organic, I was feeding him peanuts every day. We'll talk about the. I called peanut the devil on steroids, Master major aflatoxin, which is a mycotoxin on steroids. We were feeding him wheat, which has got glyphosates, as we now know, which are so deleterious because of the roundup that's sprayed on the wheat crops. We were feeding him a lot of citrus and orange juice, which is sugar, which feeds the streptococcus in the candida. That was so living in his body because he was given a regular dose of 60 milligrams of prednisone. For a three year old, that's a heavy duty dose. For an adult, he was like Spiderman. We had to pull him off the walls. He was so really jacked up.

And it's especially 20 years ago, if you told someone, what I eat changes how I feel, they would tell you you were stupid and paranoid.

When you tell people, don't eat this thing, but they love it there is a boomerang effect that happens. They end up going back to it. In all my coaching, I find this over and over again. The minute you tell an adult no, it backfires and they backfire on themselves. So it's grace. And if you try the gluten and it wreaks havoc on you and you feel like you're hungover the next day, practically or bent over, you're not going to have it anymore. But that's because you made that decision rather than somebody telling you, here's a plan, and I'm telling you not to have this, this, and this.

How do you coach people to know how or where to draw the line?

You know, I really start in the kitchen by teaching them about food and about taste and experiencing the essence of a flavor in the purest sense of a food. So where I start with people is a taste bud reset. You know, you were talking about the penguins and their taste buds. Well, we come with a set of taste buds and we don't really exercise them very much, especially here in the US I think most people would. If you stick out your tongue, right on the tip of your tongue is your sweet and your salty taste buds. Well, how about exploring the sour and the umami and the bitter and then allowing that to lead you to what you end up craving. And I am firmly of the belief when you start to eat food without all of this stuff added on, you explore a different side of what you love.

Michael Pollan, author of the Omnomorous Dilemma and then many books beyond that, said that we were a bunch of walking corn sticks. And I take that one step further. I say we're a bunch of walking mold sticks because corn effectively translates to mold. And then as you talked about the glyphosate. The glyphosate deleterious on so many levels because one of the other things that it has done to us is that it has inhibited our body's ability to produce the gut bacteria, which breaks down oxalates, which has a tie in to mycotoxins, therefore exacerbating our situation with things, all things mold and mycotoxic.

Can you define what amyloids are for people? And then I want you to talk about your system view of mycotoxin, stress, amyloids and just inflammatory foods. But first, what is amyloid?

Amyloid is a misfolded protein that actually we have amyloids in our body. And when our body is in balance, it becomes part of our homeostatic mechanism, meaning we try to Those amyloids in check are part of our eating away our inflammatory responses. However, we have now hit a tipping point on a misfolded protein structure coming from our food supply. And the biggest offender of that is, according to studies out of Cambridge and Japan, chicken. I have now deemed chicken the dirty bird. Chicken in its tissue, because of its crowding conditions, carries the highest amyloid count. And, Dave, I will tell you, we are so, in my practice with all the clinical outcomes, we had a type 1 diabetic. We were able to reduce his insulin by almost 90% and rid his of his osteomyelitis within four weeks. He had one meal of chicken, and his blood sugar increased by 200 points for four days. But also turkey and pork, they carry these truncated protein structures. What's so interesting about these amyloids is that they're now being linked to contributing to autoimmune disease, to type 1 diabetes, to kidney disease, to Alzheimer's, to Parkinson's. And the dirty little secret is that we now know that the mycotoxins and the biofilm that they produce feed the amyloids. Well, why are amyloids so deleterious? It's because the viruses in our body use the amyloids to protect their protein coating. I'm calling it the ping pong effect biofilm for the mycotoxins make amyloids, and guess what? Amyloids feed biofilm, and then the viruses hide inside the biofilm.

At the end of the day, I think what's really important is that we focus on the quality of the food that we're getting and that we eat with intention. Because here's what happens. You were talking about going by a Taco Bell and not even seeing it. It literally leaves your conscious mind. It's because you have done something now that gives you joy and pleasure. There's nothing worse than having digestive issues. I mean, it affects everything. It affects your ability to just be a normal human being every day. I mean, I went through 10 years, pretty much of a serious brain fog from depriving myself of the nutrients that I needed to function as a normal human being. And consequently, my memory from that time of my life, it's gone. I really don't remember a lot of things from that time period. And it's excruciating for me to even say that. But having gone through it, what it's taught me is what feels good for me. It's not what other people dictate. It's what absolutely is a personal thing. And why would I put Myself out there again in that place that was like a desert and feel horrible when I feel awesome and shoot, I turned 50 this year and I don't think I've ever felt more vibrant and well balanced in my approach. And I think that flexibility, but still focusing on a core system that works where you're exercising your metabolism, you're flexing your taste buds, your exploring a variety of different, you know, macronutrients and having fun with food. I want to bring people back into the kitchen and have that, that honest interaction with the product, with what grows from the ground, with, with what comes from the earth and enjoy the art of putting a meal together. It's so satisf.

How do you be plant based without making nutrient depleted soil, Terry?

That's a really good question, Dave. Well, one of the things we can do is getting back to our smaller gardens, going back to community. Community gardens, going back to those.

Hold on. Don't you have to put animal poop in the soil in your community garden?

Well, you know what's really interesting, Dave, is I visited Polyface Farms and the work of Joel Salatin. I went to his Lunatics tour.

He's been on the show a while back.

Fantastic. He took a decimated piece of property and created a utopian society for little happy animals. And he did it with their poop.

Yeah, I don't think we can support a plant based diet. I think it's actually environmentally harmful. And those people are saying, oh, I'm just going to eat plants. We're almost out of the nitrogen we mine to feed you those plants. The only way we can get that is by rotating our crops and having animals come through between the crops and crap on the ground.

You know, that's a really brilliant statement. And what I do know, and what I believe has not been proven yet is this methane that they're saying from the hooved animals. Well, how is it now that we're producing so much methane when they have been on the planet for millennia? My theory is they're eating indigestible food. When we can't digest our food, what do we do? We produce methane, feed them what they were intended to eat, and the methane, the methane concentrations will go down. They're meant to be herbivores and corn is not considered to be healthy for them on any level.

I think that once you get into a place where you know what feels good for you and you practice it over and over again, what you find is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel all the Time. You know, I think obviously naturally our body craves more food at times because we're more active and it craves less food at other times. But if you were to just take somebody that is just starting down this path and you gave them a set of tools and you said these are the tools that you need just to be successful right out the gate so you don't sabotage yourself. I think there's a really common denominator here. Hydration is so essential. We often disguise hunger as it's actually thirst. And so making sure you're drinking enough clear liquids every day, that's a common denominator. Making sure you're eating. If you're going to eat vegetables, choose greens. Greens give us the most nutrient dense bite for our calorie buck. Again, it's not about counting calories, but if you're just going to take the best things to retrain your palate and nourish you, it's greens. As far as the vegetable category goes.

You know what was really interesting, they did a study with mice, is that you fed them amyloids. The mice became super inflamed and then they died. You stopped feeding the amyloids to the mice and the amyloids were gone in their little bodies. And so this is, there's so much nutritional beauty in how we can resolve chronicles chronic conditions in our country. If we focus on the food, it's the alpha and the omega. I say if you can do everything else right, you get the food wrong, you're still not going to get it right.

So the things that cause amyloids, one of them is mycotoxins. Because these, even at parts per billion level of mold toxins, cause tissues in humans and animals to become inflamed, which causes amyloid production.

Yes, sir.

And what hasn't been clear until you've really been the guiding voice on this, you're saying, okay, now these amyloids are there, what are they doing besides just keeping your tissues from being flexible? Oh, they're making the viral load worse.

Indeed, indeed. That's really. We have done so much great work, Dave, on identifying these reactivation of viruses. When people have been diagnosed with end stage cancer or infertility or Ms. Or Hashimoto's, and you look at their viral load, you make them wild, you stop feeding the amyloid structures, you lower their mycotoxin proportions in their body, you feed them the right fats, depending on their genetic blueprint to see how much fat they can assimilate. And these situations resolve over and over and over again. The body is highly intelligent and wants to be imbalanced.

You know, you can't get it from one category. You have to combine your categories. You have to have that good fat, you have to have those vegetables. You need to have those amino acids. I mean, at the end of the day, those essential amino acids are what fuel us and allow us to regulate our hormones and flex our metabolisms and build muscle and all of the things that we need to be functioning human beings. And you can get that array of amino acids. It doesn't have to just come from a protein source, it can come from other things too. And you can combine things to get there as well. And the sure sign for most people is after you eat that meal, do you feel hungry an hour later? Do you feel hungry 30 minutes later? And if that's the case, you've got to realize that we're all in different phases of our lives. You, Dave, need different nutrients than I do as a female. We have different activity levels. From there, we layer on the good quality amino acid sources which are essential. And we need them every day because our body doesn't produce them. We need to make sure that we're getting enough sleep. My goodness. Not even talking about food, but sleeping well so that we can regulate our hormones and lower cortisol and actually keep it all together. So even beyond food and hydration, our lifestyle, how we manage stress, how we breathe. I became a student of yoga about 13 years ago and it was a life changer. I was suffering from really high blood pressure. It runs in my family. It's hereditary on my mom's side. But I was like, I'll be damned if this gets to me. I'm an active person. I eat well, I preach this lifestyle, something's gonna give. And when I started doing yoga, everything changed for me because of my breathing practice was conscientious. So it's one spoke in the wheel, but it's an important spoke.

What do you eat? If you don't have access at some restaurant to grass fed meat, what are your chances?

It's a really good question. So I gravitate towards lamb. I really like lamb. There's a, you know, in the restaurants you can find some lamb. Love it. Lamb, the conjugated linoleic acid, my brain food, baby. I love that stuff.

I just go outside and take a bite of the lambs I have outside.

Lamb sushi, lamb on the cob.

I like to call it lamb on the cob.

If you have what I call the least worst options Right. So chicken I will never put on my plate anymore. I know too much about it. I haven't had it in two years. Not one stick of chicken.

I haven't had it in 10 years.

I don't eat that crap.

I love it.

I'm gonna put you in my next one.

You can feel a difference. Like seriously, if you go on a chicken free diet for a while and then just go pound some chicken and feel what? Just look at your love handles the next morning. It's very obvious.

Very obvious. So what I usually try to do is I'll try to go with fish. You know, fish tends to be generally seasoned safer. I won't do black beans. But if you have a lentil soup, even though it's a little bit got mycotoxins. So as I look at what the hierarchy of needs in is in the in that food constituent lentils will also afford me some B12, which is really important for my methylation genes. And it will also give me some good iron and it's got a lot of good fiber. So sometimes we make the least worst choices.

Got it. So you'll eat lentils at a restaurant if you have to, but they're not your first choice.

They're not my first choice. Usually it's going to be fish or lamb.

If you go to a restaurant that's a decent restaurant, you can usually find a piece of fish.

Yes, absolutely.

Now here's the hard question. Will you eat a piece of farmed salmon?

Wow. Okay. It depends on how hungry I am.

Good answer. The same way.

Your phone screen is aging your skin and wrecking your sleep at the same time. Artificial blue light goes from your phone screen straight into your eyes and deep into your skin. That light messes with your melatonin levels, interrupts your deep sleep and speeds up skin aging by breaking down collagen. The bodyguard's red light converter fixes this at the source. It's a first of its kind screen protector with real tech that converts blue light into beneficial red light before it hits your face. It turns your scrolling into a skincare routine. It supports healthier skin, reduced eye strain, improved sleep quality and fewer screen related headaches. Third party testing showed a 50% plus increase in red light exposure within the optimal range of 620-770nm. And this comes with zero compromise on your screen. The red light converter preserves your screen's true colors and full touch sensitivity beyond its wellness benefits. The the red light converter provides ultra thin edge to edge protection for your Device and bodyguards stands by their quality. Enjoy peace of mind with lifetime replacements ensuring your red light converter continues to protect and support your biology for the long haul. Visit bodyguards.com and use code Dave for 25% off. That's bodyguards with a Z.com for 25% off.

You're listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey. Here's the hard question. Will you eat a piece of farm salmon?

Wow. Okay. It depends on how hungry I am.

Good answer. I'm the same way.

I will eat it if I'm really starving. And I've been in a conference for several days and it's. I'm still gonna get something and it what it's gonna do what really kicks my patoucas, oxalates, chicken, amyloids and sulfur. Those three are my non negotiables.

Well, you just brought something up that I think is really important is we just launched a program called Eat to Thrive and it is a guided program that helps people navigate through the book in a little bit more detail. And in every section, I encourage people to write down how they feel. It's not just for the sake of busy work or homework. It's. You really don't realize what triggers until you start notating it. You know, I personally TMI maybe, but like I have a really hard time with eating a lot of cruciferous vegetables.

It's okay to not eat those if that's you. Right?

Totally. And you decide, okay, well, maybe I can have them this way. Or maybe I can't really have them. I mean, it's okay. There are a million other choices. It doesn't mean that you throw all of the vegetables out, but you find the ones that fit you and your needs and your digestion. And at the same time, you're making sure your gut health is in order. A big emphasis of this book is getting your gut health. Gut health in order. Because none of this all matters unless your digestion is working properly.

You talk about something that's super out there and you talk about the relationship between your words and your food. Oh, yes, walk me through that.

Okay, well, we're beginning to see that the emerging science of vibrational everything. We vibrate at certain frequencies. Every thought we think, every word that leaves our mouth has a vibrational frequency. If we have, and this is studies out of University of Pennsylvania and other universities that are showing. And of course, the work of Dispenza, Joe Dispenza, who's become an international phenomena, is that when we entertain thoughts of. I don't want to eat this food. I'm going to eat this and it's going to make me fat. Why the heck do I have to cook this meal? I didn't want to cook this meal. You are imparting a low vibration into the thinking, which then carries an energetic frequency, which will then potentially lower the nutrient vibrancy of that food. And also when we're mad upset, the pituitary can't signal for the stomach to make hydrochloric acid. So guess what? We're not going to digest our food that well. And so there's multiple effects that are happening on the body biochemically and energetically. And so we say your words and your thoughts have a direct impact on the bioavailability of the foods that you are eating. And words can be, in a way, poison to us, and thoughts can be poison as well.

So, you know, I think you pinpointed that, and I think that's where we all owe it to ourselves too. I call it the language of label ease. You know, really kind of understanding what is in a label when you read it, because oftentimes it does look like a foreign language. And, you know, then you go out to eat and then you really have no idea what they're putting in it. So starting there and understanding what the additives are out there. And I, you know, I almost had to go to the hospital from an MSG attack at a restaurant that told me that there was no MSG in there. So if you're highly sensitive, really incumbent on you to do the homework and ask the questions, you know, I really, if I can just give a little shout out to my grandfather. My grandfather lived to be 93 years old, and he, until maybe four months before he passed away, I was living with him in Egypt and we were walking to the market about half a mile away, and he was carrying. And I'll never forget this image, two huge watermelons, one in each hand, coming back from the market. And I was like, giddu, giddu means grandfather in Arabic. Let me carry one of the watermelons for you. That's too heavy. And he said, no, this is my exercise and I need one in each hand to keep me balanced. And I will never forget just the vibrant light that he was and how he ate. He knew so much about nutrition. He's the one that really introduced the whole concept to me and keeping fit, keeping his brain exercised. And he was just the model to me of what a balanced life looks like. And that is all I could hope for.

Coming up on the end of our interview, Terri, your book is called Wildatarian Diet. Your website is terrycochran.com, t e r I c o C-H-R-A n e.com and thanks for walking us through that very important understanding of how mold in our food and in our environment creates bacterial biofilms, that creates amyloids, that creates viral load, that creates inflammation, that starts the cycle. Again, no one has ever elucidated that on the show, and it's important. So thank you.

Thank you. My great pleasure. You're welcome. Great to see you.

That's it. Eatcleaner.com we have all of our products and programs and the book and a podcast also for people to listen to called Recipes for your best life.

Life.

And just, you know, at the end of the day, it is about bringing people together. I always say hashtag, you know, sharing is caring, but the more we can share good food and this kind of wisdom, like what you've put into this world, and I have to thank you for that.

Thanks, Maria. I appreciate you coming on the show. Keep sharing your work with the world and have a wonderful, wonderful day. Keep doing what you do. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provide provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.